Bancor Cryptocurrency: The Complete Investor Guide

Bancor cryptocurrency was able to attract the attention of investors with an interesting idea. However, after the attackers managed to crack a purse on the Bancor platform in July of this year and steal a decent amount of money, many investors thought about the reliability of the project. What is Bancor cryptocurrency, who is a member of the project team and is it worth investing in it? Understand this article!

What is Bancor cryptocurrency?

Bancor is a blockchain protocol that allows conversion between different tokens without the involvement of intermediaries. This is possible through the use of reserve currencies, which allow automatic and algorithmic pricing regardless of the volume of trade.

The main idea of the project is to make smart tokens a legal currency, that is, to create a standard that will link all cryptocurrencies in an autonomous decentralized liquid network.

June 12, 2017 Bancor set a record, collecting $ 153 million for the three hours of the ICO.

The BNT token is the internal currency of Bancor and the first smart token based on this protocol. The total number of BNTs is 75,797,992 tokens, but since this is a smart token, the number of BNTs in circulation constantly fluctuates.

BNT transactions are processed at a level that is separated from the main level of the Casper protocol from Ethereum, using the Proof-of-Stake algorithm.

Smart tokens can be created or liquidated at any time, adding them to the turnover or deleting them from it. Therefore, the number of tokens varies depending on the conversions that occur in the Bancor network.

Users can exchange any cryptocurrency for a BNT token and vice versa. It can also serve as an intermediary for converting cryptocurrencies between themselves.

You can get a BNT by sending an ETH to a specific wallet address. Receipt of BNT tokens after sending funds occurs almost instantly. In a similar way, BNT can be changed to ETH.

Key features of Bancor cryptocurrency

The task of the Bancor platform is to provide users with the opportunity to exchange tokens without intermediaries in the form of exchanges and other operators, and also create their own tokens on its base.

Automated liquidity allows you to promote tokens of various communities and other altcoins. Users can select coins for sharing within their city or region, and companies can create coins for use in loyalty programs.

Initially, the project is designed for the Ethereum blockchain and its ERC-20 standard tokens, allowing even little-known ones to be always freely convertible into any other in automatic mode.

Bancor protocol allows you to create a new type of cryptocurrency called Smart Token. The peculiarity of this type of token is that it can automatically exchange to other tokens, eliminating the need for an intermediary in the transaction.

Smart contracts on the Ethereum platform, constantly keep reserves of one or several tokens and make it possible to release or burn your token. If the user wants to exchange 2 tokens that do not directly hold reserves of each other, then the Bancor protocol finds such a path automatically, doing the necessary operations, and as a result producing the same result.

Smart Tokens are united into one network, the linking of which is the Bancor token itself – BNT. Thus, at any time, all tokens are liquid to at least BNT.

For exchange operations through the Bancor platform, no additional fees are charged, only the costs of the transactions of the blockchain of Ethereum itself are covered. The difference between the purchase price and the sale price (spread) is also absent.

How it works on the example:

When buying token X for token Y, you send token Y to the address of the smart contract, which in turn adds Y to its reserves, while releasing new X tokens for you. If you want to sell token X for token Y, then you need send your token X to the address of this contract, which will burn it, issuing you token Y from its reserves.

Thus, based on the dynamics of supply and demand, the price will change, imitating the real market.

Where to store Bancor cryptocurrency?

You can store the BNT token on the official Bancor platform wallet. Also in April 2018, Bancor introduced a mobile wallet that allows for decentralized conversion of various cryptotokenes.

As noted in the company’s blog, Bancor Wallet users no longer need to use the services of centralized sites, where there are trade spreads and commissions. The new solution allows you to control private keys and exchange cryptoactive assets decentralized through smart contracts.

Bancor cryptocurrency: project team and roadmap
The Bancor team brings together the Advisory Board and the Foundation Board:

Bernard Lietayer is a Belgian professor, civil engineer, author and economist who specializes in monetary systems and promotes the promotion of communities that create their own cryptocurrencies.
Eyal Hertzog, a developer, is also a co-founder of the Appcoin project, which is also designed for operations with cryptocurrencies.
Guy Benarzi – co-founder, previously participated in the creation of the company Mytopia, and also founded a development studio in Tel Aviv Particle Code.
Guido Schmitz-Krummacher is the executive director of the fund, he participates in various commercial projects in Switzerland, including the Tezos crowdfunding network.
Tim Draper is a renowned venture capitalist and founder of Draper Associates, a member of the project’s Advisory Board.
After the ICO, the first major platform update was released. In its framework, new tokens were added and a portable widget was deployed for the safe purchase and sale of tokens.

In April 2018, a Bancor wallet was launched with an integrated token exchange function.

Currently, 93 tokens are exchanged on the platform (24 of them were added in May 2018), which is more than 4,300 different pairs.

Added SMS login function, the ability to buy ETH using a credit or debit card.

The following events are scheduled for the near future: support for the Trezor hardware wallet, implementation of support for multiple profiles in one account, synchronization with Web3.

In 2019, it is planned to add support for interaction with other blockchains, as well as a number of other innovations aimed at improving sustainability and efficiency.

Should I invest in Bancor cryptocurrency?

The main advantages of Bancor cryptocurrency include the following:

Unlimited liquidity – smart tokens are available for purchase and liquidation through the use of smart contracts for everyone.
Availability of backward compatibility – the functioning of the Bancor-protocol provides the possibility of liquidity and asynchronous determination of the cost of any token that meets the standards of ERC-20.
No spread – counting the cost of coins is provided by smart tokens, which ensures equal value of the currency when performing any operations.
No risks – you do not need to carry out currency conversion on exchange markets outside the platform.
Reduced volatility – the characteristics and properties of smart tokens provide a reduction in price volatility.
Price slippage – this indicator is calculated based on the size of the transaction and is included in the current value.
The main risks are:

Bancor has been repeatedly criticized. Among the key weaknesses of the system was its vulnerability and errors at the basic level. The most striking example of criticism was an article written by Emin Gün Sirer, a professor at Cornell University. The article consisted of 29 points, which pointed out the shortcomings of the system.

On July 9, 2018, attackers broke into a Bancor wallet and stole 24,984 ETH and 229.35 million NPXS. But the project team was able to freeze the withdrawal of 3.2 million BNT, since the platform protocol provides for a quick response to possible threats in order to minimize damage to the community.

Now Bancor is a full-fledged stable working platform, which is constantly updated and supplemented with new types of tokens and functions. The idea of instant exchange of tokens without intermediaries and commissions has attracted the attention of the community, and the weekly trading volume is constantly increasing, having increased more than threefold since the beginning of 2018.

The project predicts a great future, provided that its developers continue to work at the same pace and with even greater initiative.